1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to block device request management. More specifically, the present invention relates to the direct control of a block data storage device (block device) being controlled by an application running on a computer system in user space.
2. Description of the Related Art
Currently when an I/O request is received through hardware, that request is passed from the hardware to the operating system kernel. The kernel evaluates the request, configures a host bus adaptor (HBA), and the kernel sends I/O blocks to disk for storage. Applications running in user space do not know where a particular file resides. This is because the hardware is abstracted from applications by the kernel. For example, if a user commands an application to open a file, the application must communicate a file request with the kernel and the kernel parses the file system, determines where on the file is located, initiates block commands to the block device, and sends the file to the application.
There is a need for an improved block device management when I/O blocks are to be stored in different ways.